GHSA-cjvr-mfj7-j4j8 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) Information Exposure vulnerability in scrapy. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for scrapy — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Incorrect Authorization and Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor in scrapy
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-cjvr-mfj7-j4j8 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
scrapy🐍scrapyReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
If you manually define cookies on a Request object, and that Request object gets a redirect response, the new Request object scheduled to follow the redirect keeps those user-defined cookies, regardless of the target domain.
Patches
Upgrade to Scrapy 2.6.0, which resets cookies when creating Request objects to follow redirects¹, and drops the Cookie header if manually-defined if the redirect target URL domain name does not match the source URL domain name².
If you are using Scrapy 1.8 or a lower version, and upgrading to Scrapy 2.6.0 is not an option, you may upgrade to Scrapy 1.8.2 instead.
¹ At that point the original, user-set cookies have been processed by the cookie middleware into the global or request-specific cookiejar, with their domain restricted to the domain of the original URL, so when the cookie middleware processes the new (redirect) request it will incorporate those cookies into the new request as long as the domain of the new request matches the domain of the original request.
² This prevents cookie leaks to unintended domains even if the cookies middleware is not used.
Workarounds
If you cannot upgrade, set your cookies using a list of dictionaries instead of a single dictionary, as described in the Request documentation, and set the right domain for each cookie.
Alternatively, you can disable cookies altogether, or limit target domains to domains that you trust with all your user-set cookies.
References
- Originally reported at huntr.dev
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | scrapy | all versions | 1.8.2pip install --upgrade 'scrapy==1.8.2' |
| 🐍PyPI | scrapy | ≥ 2.0.0&&< 2.6.1 | 2.6.1pip install --upgrade 'scrapy==2.6.1' |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for scrapy, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update scrapy to 1.8.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-cjvr-mfj7-j4j8 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-cjvr-mfj7-j4j8 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-cjvr-mfj7-j4j8. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-cjvr-mfj7-j4j8 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-cjvr-mfj7-j4j8 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.